Everyday Nationalism: Constructivism for the Masses*opus.bath.ac.uk/48340/1/Goode_et_al_2015_Social... · The second half of the article suggests ways that an everyday nationalism

Everyday Nationalism: Constructivismfor the Masses∗

J. Paul Goode, University of Bath

David R. Stroup, University of Oklahoma

Objective. We argue that the “everyday nationalism” approach is both useful and necessary forimproving existing constructivist approaches in the comparative study of nationalism and ethnicpolitics. Methods. A meta-analysis of existing studies reveals pervasive conceptual and methodolog-ical problems of contemporary constructivist approaches. We consider the implications of replacingindividuals or groups with ethnic or nationalist practices as units of analysis. Results. Everydaynationalism promises to address the gap between constructivist theory and the methodological in-dividualism of existing studies. This approach proceeds from ethnographic observation and utilizesmethods reliant on observing societal interaction or relational meaning making for verification.We illustrate such a research strategy using examples of nationalist legitimation in authoritarianregimes and the ethnicization of economic development. Conclusion. The everyday nationalismapproach promises to overcome the shortcomings in much contemporary constructivist work. Thepotential for developing qualitative data sets of nationalist or ethnic practices further promises tocomplement constructivist insights.

Over the last 25 years, the comparative study of nationalism and ethnic politics in thesocial sciences witnessed something of a renaissance. A new generation of scholars advancedresearch agendas concerning nationalist mobilization (Beissinger, 2002), ethnic parties andpatronage (Chandra, 2004), ethnic institutions (Posner, 2005; Lieberman, 2009), ethnicconflict and civil wars (Varshney, 2002; Wilkinson, 2004; Cederman, Wimmer, and Min,2010), and democratization (Snyder, 2000; Stroschein, 2012). In decisively breaking withprimordial assumptions about ethnicity and nationality as a function of descent, this newliterature formed creative linkages with related work on social movements, social andpolitical institutions, social psychology, cognitive science, and international relations. Thisintellectual ferment found infrastructural support for scholarship in the founding (andrevival) of new academic journals, scholarly organizations, degree-granting programs, andinclusion in standard disciplinary curricula. Yet the depth and success of these efforts alsocast into sharp relief the gaps, omissions, and opportunities in the field: in brief, the massesremain something of a mystery.

That the study of ethnic and nationalist politics would be challenged by the incorporationof mass society into analysis is surprising, given the widespread scholarly acceptance of theconstructivist paradigm. In broad terms, constructivists hold that power is both ideationaland material, and that interests and identities are constituted through intersubjective

∗Direct correspondence to J. Paul Goode, Department of Politics, Languages & International Stud-ies 〈[email protected]〉 and David R. Stroup, Department of Political Science, University of Oklahoma〈[email protected]〉. A previous version of this article was presented at a roundtable on “ResearchMethods and the Study of Nationalism” at the Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Na-tionalities, April 26, 2014, in New York. We thank the roundtable and conference participants for helpfulfeedback and suggestions.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLYC© 2015 by the Southwestern Social Science AssociationDOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12188

2 Social Science Quarterly

meanings, in turn created through varieties of social interaction. Constructivism thus bearsa holist rather than an individualist ontology in which context necessarily precedes agency(Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001). Early constructivists in the study of nationalism focusedon the roles of modernity and the state in fleshing out the shape and sense of nationhood(Anderson, 2006; Deutsch, 1966; Gellner, 1965; Hobsbawm, 1992; Smith, 1998). Inhis famous formulation, Anderson (2006) describes the nation as a product of changesin dynastic and religious authority and the spread of vernacular languages through printcapitalism, resulting in communities whose members imagine the nation to be both finiteand sovereign. However, as social scientists pushed past questions of ethnic and nationalorigins to attempt generalizations about the uses and manipulations of identity, theiranalyses retreated to forms of methodological individualism in focusing on elites, ethno-preneurs, and individual agency. Correspondingly, the constructed nature of identitiesbecame bound to state and political institutions as regulating the conditions for actorsto challenge or manipulate identity categories to achieve mobilizational or distributionaloutcomes. However, the concern for modeling and explaining individual (elite) decisionmaking has meant that the responsiveness of ethnic masses to elite cues (or, for that matter,their relationship to the origins of those cues) is largely inferred from political outcomes orfrom survey data. The actual processes of meaning making and the exercise of vernacularpower that are constitutive of social identities remain veiled, with the result being that thereis an uncomfortable silence concerning large questions that are common objects of ethnicand nationalist politics and that are of central and perpetual concern to the social sciences.

If the academic study of nationalism has so far succeeded in converting masses intoagents and ethno-preneurs, it is time to consider how one might reverse the process. Inorder to put the masses back into the picture, we argue that constructivist approaches wouldbenefit from further development of the “everyday nationalism” approach. This approachfocuses less on elites and institutions than on the quotidian practices by which ethnic andnational identities are elaborated, confirmed, reproduced, or challenged. In the first partof this article, we discuss four distinct problems faced by existing approaches to ethnic andnationalist politics: the invisibility of dominant ethnicities, an inattentiveness to legitima-tion, an excessive institutionalism in explanations, and the persistence of methodologicalnationalism. The second half of the article suggests ways that an everyday nationalismapproach can address these problems, using the examples of nationalist legitimacy in au-thoritarian regimes and the ethnicization of economic development. Finally, we addressthe range of benefits of such an approach for extending our understanding of ethnic andnationalist politics, including the potential for developing qualitative databases of ethnicand nationalist practices for comparative analysis.

Blind Spots, Gaps, and Gaffes in Constructivist Approaches

While the “constructivist turn” produced useful insights about the nature of ethnicity,it remains vulnerable to blind spots and shortcomings often associated with the study ofnationalism and ethnic politics. We identify four distinct challenges faced by constructiviststudies today. First, the current state of the study of nationalism displays a certain degreeof intellectual path dependence in remaining principally focused on ethnic minorities,minority ethnic mobilization, and accommodating ethnic minorities. By contrast, ethnicmajorities are surprisingly understudied. This is perhaps a consequence of the tendency toassociate ethnic politics with ethnic diversity.1 These objects of study are determined in

1As discussed in the contribution to this issue by K. Marquardt and Y. Herrera.

Everyday Nationalism 3

part by real-world demands—including ongoing attempts to manage ethnic relations inAfghanistan and Iraq, or to describe the rise of separatist movements in Scotland, Quebec,and Catalonia—and partly by the field’s theoretical consensus that constructivist approachesare most appropriate for analyzing ethnic change and nationalist politics. These approachesall share a common structural feature in their selection of cases as each deals with conditionsof ethnic diversity. This might also be seen as a function of the “constructivist consensus” inthe field insofar as constructivist approaches understand ethnic identity as a particular setof social phenomena that bind individuals to groups, conjure convincing attachments to“groupness,” and observe interactions across ethnic boundaries (Brubaker, 2004; Chandra,2012; Eriksen, 2002; Wimmer, 2013). Rather than treating ethnic identities as independentvariables, constructivist approaches problematize identities as ever-changing outcomes,constrained by the range of available identity repertoires and varying principally in termsof the frequency and speed of change.

The field’s focus on accounting for changes and modalities of ethnic identities thereforepresumes social worlds in which minorities and majorities reflect distributions of, anddifferential access to, discursive and material power. For social scientists who study ethnicpolitics and nationalism, minority ethnic movements are easier to identify and observeprecisely because they seek to expose inequitable power relations and to mobilize supportthrough frames of injustice. To the extent that the existing literature addresses ethnicmajorities, it tends to do so with reference to relations with (or accommodation of ) ethnicminorities. In rare instances, it focuses on intraethnic conflict over the definition of groupboundaries or the content of group identities.2 For the majority of the field, however,ethnic majorities tend to fade from view, forming more of a background condition thatstructures minority ethnic politics (Kaufmann, 2004).

A related factor that tends to obscure the politics of ethnic majorities involves thepersistence of the distinction between civic and ethnic nations in the literature. Thisdistinction has its origins in the 20th-century study of nationalism, most often attributedto Kohn’s ([1994] 2005) examination of Western and Eastern varieties of nationalismand later by Michael Ignatieff’s Blood and Belonging (1993). In brief, civic (or sometimes“political” or “territorial”) nationalism defines national loyalties in terms of the state’sterritory and institutions. National identity is rendered as a matter of choice, exemplifiedby Renan’s ([1882] 1994) claim that “the nation is an everyday plebiscite.” This aspect ofchoice and the apparently neutral means of identifying the nation in terms of territory andinstitutions also collapse the distinction between nationality and citizenship, nationalismand patriotism, and state and nation. As a result, “civic nations” are portrayed as inherentlyinclusive, tolerant, and pluralistic.

By contrast, “ethnic nations” are defined by primordial ties—most often in terms of(perceived) common descent or kinship. Ethnic identity is not a matter of choice. Indi-viduals do not define their national identities in relation to state institutions and territory.Rather, ethnic nationalists define individuals as irretrievably national, depriving individu-als of choice and demanding that state institutions empower ethnic groups and recognizethem as autonomous or sovereign nations. Ethnic nationalism is, therefore, understoodin opposition to civic nationalism in presenting a form of national identification that isexclusive, intolerant, and tends toward authoritarian politics.

The civic-ethnic distinction is more an artifice of academic reasoning than lived ex-perience. Virtually every country today enshrines a civic definition of the nation in its

2Millier-Idriss (2009), for example, examines how German national identity is contested across generationallines.


constitution or institutionally in the form of citizenship and naturalization policy. This in-stitutionalized categorization of the nation nevertheless runs counter to citizens’ day-to-dayexperience in which ethnicity and ethnic understandings of the nation are constantly (ifunevenly) activated. In other words, civic and ethnic concepts of the nation exist alongsideone another—nobody experiences the nation as wholly civic or ethnic—while the degreeto which people find them meaningful may be a matter of historical contingency, relationaldynamics, or political opportunity. As Yack suggests in his well-known critique of Ignatieff,the embrace of civic definitions of the nation may blind one to the extent to which ethnicidentification operates beneath the level of awareness:

It may have been easier to establish a liberal democratic regime in East Germany byintegrating it into an already functioning and wealthy liberal democracy such as the FederalRepublic. But this option was not offered—or even contemplated by the Federal Republicto the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia or Poland or any other former Communist state.How can one explain the peculiar form of East Germany’s transition from Communismwithout invoking the prepolitical community of shared memory and history that tied Westto East Germans, a sense of community that led the former to single out the latter forspecial support and attention? (Yack, 1996:199)

Others argue that civic understandings of the nation reflect the outcomes of prior identitystruggles, such that state institutions tend to privilege the victor’s (typically the majority’s)identity and interests as patriotic and universal rather than ethnic (Marx, 2003). Therecognition of minority identities and interests as “ethnic” is, therefore, a reflection ofpower imbalances that pit minority claims grounded in ethnic particularity against theethnic majority’s putatively universal interests and categories of identification. Under suchcircumstances, attempts to cultivate “civic” (nonethnic) understandings of the nation instate practice as a means of accommodating ethnic minorities fundamentally miss thepoint.

Perhaps more worrisome is that the persistence of the civic-ethnic distinction shifts thefocus of analysis to ethnic minorities while concealing the nationalist politics of ethnicmajorities. The difficulty is that nationalism may become difficult to distinguish from sim-ple majority rule in democracies when majority ethnic or nationalist appeals are renderedas patriotism. In effect, the burden of observing ethnic majority nationalism is shifted tominority ethnic actors, who must demonstrate power imbalances and expose the conflu-ence of state policy with discriminatory majority ethnic interests. To the extent that thisarticulation is possible in relatively free and open regimes that extend legal protectionsand representation for minorities (or, at a minimum, the potential for obtaining suchprotections), it is far less likely to be observed in closed, authoritarian regimes in whichrepresentative bodies are rubber stamps and the open expression of minority ethnic interestsand identities as distinct from that of the ethnic majority is closely monitored, ritualized,or even suppressed. In this important sense, one might add that the civic-ethnic distinctionnot only distracts attention from the operation of majority ethnic interests in the state, butit also shifts attention away from the influence of regime type on ethnic relations and themajority’s nationalist politics.

Second, there has been little development in the study of nationalism in the Gellneriansense as a doctrine of political legitimacy (Gellner, 1983). The current state of the artfocuses not so much on nationalism as on ethnicity and ethnic politics, with constructivistapproaches converging on the ways that individuals choose among identity repertoires,how those repertoires are institutionalized, and how ethnic boundaries or the sense of“group-ness” change. Nationalism is related to these aspects of ethnic politics only insofaras it is understood to be an “ethnic” nationalism—that is, related to ethnic boundaries or


identity (Chandra, 2012; Wimmer, 2013). More often than not, this means that the studyof nationalism is limited to ethnic minorities rather than the (seemingly) “nonethnic”nationalism of contemporary ethnic majorities. In turn, the relationship of nationalismto legitimacy and legitimation of the state is framed as a historically specific question,connected with either the “golden age” of nationalism in the 19th century, the aggressivelyracist and fascist regimes of the early-to-middle 20th century, or the wave of anti-colonialand anti-Soviet movements of the middle-to-late 20th century. What these periods havein common is the self-conscious mobilization of the nation as a vehicle for claimingself-determination or defending sovereignty.

But nationalism does not stop at independence. If nationalism serves mobilizationalpurposes in the drive for self-determination and sovereignty, it also serves as a crucialsource of legitimation for new regimes after mobilizational cycles (Barrington, 2006). Newincumbents who ride to power on the back of nationalist movements must continue toclaim to fulfill their obligations to the nation. To the extent that nationalist goals becomeindistinguishable from the state’s interests, domestic and foreign policies of incumbentsbecome rendered as patriotic or simply state-oriented (Breuilly, 1994:390). Certainly,there is awareness of nationalist actors’ grievances concerning illegitimate distributions ofpower, but analysis of ethnic politics following independence or regime change remainsprincipally focused on mobilization rather than legitimation. The classic works on ethnicoutbidding concern attempts by ethnic parties and politicians to mobilize ethnic voters(and especially to mobilize ambivalent nonvoters to become ethnic voters) in postcolonialstates (Horowitz, 2000; Rabushka and Shepsle, 1972). The more recent work on voting andpatronage follows in this tradition as well (Chandra, 2004; Koter, 2013; Posner, 2005).Studies of subnational politics in Russia predominantly focus on mobilization amongethnic republics (Gorenburg, 2003; Giuliano, 2011; Lankina, 2004; Treisman, 1997). Bycontrast, Snyder and Gagnon explore nationalists’ strategies for keeping post-Communistpublics demobilized to limit the extent of democratization (Gagnon, 2004; Snyder, 2000).

With few exceptions, there is little in the literature that addresses the relationship amongnationalism, domestic political regimes (particularly authoritarian regimes), and legitimacy(Greenfeld, 1992; Mackerras, 2010; Goode, 2012). The extent to which nationalism servesto legitimate domestic political regimes is elided, perhaps, because we are more likely tointerpret ethnic majorities’ orientations toward state and regime in terms of patriotism.Given the pejorative connotation often attached to nationalism as separatism or a varietyof extremism, it is not surprising that ethnic majorities would valorize their own nationalistappraisals of state and regime. If this is the case, however, treating nationalism as patriotismis to commit the error of treating categories of practice as categories of analysis (Brubakerand Cooper, 2000:4–6).

Third, constructivists have been so preoccupied with explaining changes in ethnic identi-ties and their interpretation of culturally constitutive practices in terms of institutionalizedethnic categories that they risk becoming a branch of institutionalist theory. This proclivitywas found already in seminal constructivist works, including Anderson’s famous account ofthe roles played by state institutions such as the census in consolidating national identitiesor social institutions such as the museum in codifying national histories (Anderson, 2006).The surge of interest in the “new institutionalism” in the social sciences in the 1990splayed an important role as well (Harty, 2001). This was particularly evident in the manypostmortems of Soviet ethno-federalism and its legacies in Europe and Eurasia (Brubaker,1996; Bunce, 1999; Leff, 1999; Roeder, 1991). It continues in the study of ethnic parties


and patronage. As a result, models of change in ethnic identities closely parallel models ofinstitutional change (for instance, see Mahoney and Thelen, 2010).3

The inheritance of institutionalized categories and repertoires continues to loom large incontemporary constructivist works. For example, Chandra’s (2012) effort to bring coher-ence to constructivism posits that individuals choose identity categories (or combinationsof identity attributes) that are available for activation. These attributes are determinedpartly by descent—that is, those attributes that an individual visibly possesses—and byinstitutional recognition. Hence, identities do not change so much as they are activatedby individuals in a variety of combinations. However, identity repertoires (understood asthe full range of available attributes or categories) change either by way of genetic change(slowly), or by way of institutional change through the designation, recombination, orreclassification of “operative” categories. The link between the ways individuals activateidentities and changes in operative repertoires is asserted but never explained, leaving oneto guess at the mechanism linking them together (Chandra, 2012:133). At root, then,Chandra’s approach remains moored to institutionalist accounts even as it attempts tosidestep them and focus on individual agency.4

Constructivists’ focus on explaining ethnic change has also meant that there are farfewer works that examine or seek to explain ethnic structures or the stability of nationalidentities (Wimmer, 2013). No doubt this privileging of ethnic change in constructivistanalysis owes a debt to the theoretical premise that identity is social-interactional andinheres in perceived and institutionalized difference. In this sense, constructivists continuetheir decades-long argument with primordialists and perennialists that ethnic and nationalidentities are neither fixed nor premodern, long after primordialists and perennialistsevolved into ethno-symbolists.5 This focus and insistence upon the essence of identities asmalleable and changing may be essential to understanding the emergence of constructivismand the intellectual history of the study of nationalism and ethnic politics, but arguably italso prevents constructivism from advancing beyond these basic observations concerningethnic origins (that almost nobody disputes today).

In addition to this basic theoretical aspect, the focus on institutional dynamics to explainchanges in identities may also be related to the demands and opportunities for observingchange. Institutions and especially their organizational manifestations provide a wealth ofopportunities for gathering data about identity categories—or, indeed, for gathering dataabout the ways states gather data.6 And yet the gathering of such data tells us little aboutthose identity categories that are stable and unchanging other than the banal conclusionthat they are “institutionalized,” or that such categories are resistant to change because theyare institutionalized, or even that the frequency and speed of changes in identity categoriesare so slow as to be imperceptible.

Finally, the study of nationalism remains haunted by “methodological nationalism,”insofar as it starts with (or assumes) known outcomes in the form of nations or ethnicidentities that also serve simultaneously as units and levels of analysis (Wimmer and Glick

3Alternatively, it has focused on de-institutionalized processes of ethnic mobilization, conflict, and violence,drawing chiefly on insights from the social movements and contentious politics literature. But in this literature,ethnic identity is often reduced to little more than a resonant frame.

4To the extent that constructivist theories of nationalism remain tied to institutionalist approaches, theyalso tend to draw from cases that feature relatively open institutional environments that involve ethnic parties,voters, affirmative action policies, immigration, power sharing, or patronage. There are far fewer cases ofstudies of nationalism that examine authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes.

5On ethno-symbolism, see Smith (2009) and Grosby and Leoussi (2007).6Examples of state-directed collection of data on ethnicity include state census, issuing internal passports that

note the bearer’s ethnicity, mandating that citizens register as members of ethnic groups, tracking immigrationdata as a proxy for ethnicity, or cataloging and categorizing ethnicity.


Schiller, 2002). This tendency also manifests in the ongoing slippery usage of terms suchas “nation” or “ethnicity” and the temptation to refer to nations or ethnic groups as if theywere unitary actors (Barrington, 1997; Breuilly, 1994:404–20; Connor, 1978; Millard,2014). Both manifestations point to the ongoing hold of a “Herderian” ontology of aworld inhabited by ethnic groups (Wimmer, 2013:16–43; Drakulic, 2011).

Fixating on the nation as both an outcome of nationalism and a unit of analysis runsthe risk of turning scholars into unwitting nationalists. Believing the nation to be theessential building block of global society may lead scholars of nationalism to supportindirectly the claims made on behalf of nationalist movements, or to advance the samenormative claims made by nationalist movements that all nations ought to possess their ownstate. Such methodological nationalism potentially results in scholarship that promotes orjustifies irredentism, partitioning, or fragmentation, or that simply obscures the scholar’sown nationalist convictions (Brown, 2000).

More importantly, methodological nationalism blinds scholars to a plethora of theo-retically interesting questions. Focusing solely on nations in this fashion leads scholarsof nationalism in comparative politics to look inwardly at singular cases rather than ex-ploring the cases of transnational or global significance. Methodological nationalism is illsuited for the examination of issues external to the nation-state (Beck, 2000). In this sense,nationalism scholars trail their peers in other disciplines—particularly in sociology andinternational relations—in their ability to problematize and observe the influence of iden-tity in the face of increased global interconnectedness. For instance, constructivist scholarsin international relations have produced studies that explored the importance of transna-tional communities in influencing the establishment of human rights regimes over the last20 years (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Risse-Kappen, Ropp, and Sikkink, 1999). While thesetransnational forces also exert influence on matters related to identity, nationalism scholarsrarely consider their impact beyond the borders of a particular state.

Further, by privileging nations as a unit of analysis, and focusing on nations as theoutcome of nationalism, scholars may fail to observe phenomena that do not intersector overlap with formal, state institutions—such as religion or economic markets—thatexert significant influence on the process of identity contestation and ethnic boundarymaking. Here, too, political scientists engaged in the study of nationalism and ethnicitytrail behind their counterparts in other disciplines. An emerging literature in the disciplinesof cultural geography and anthropology assesses the influence of the tourism industry orethnic branding on the content of ethnic identities (Oakes, 1998; Wood, 1998; Azarya,2004; McCrone, Morris, and Kiely, 1995). Likewise, some scholars in the field of religiousstudies examine the use of public religious rituals or street festivities to simultaneouslymap ethnic and territorial boundaries (Orsi, 1985; Sciorra, 1999; Tweed, 1999; Dickson,2009). These analyses do not use the nation as their unit of analysis, nor do they attemptto describe the nation as an outcome. These studies do, however, investigate practicesthat are crucial to the process of boundary making. In focusing on nations as both unitsand outcomes, scholars of nationalism within comparative politics pass up opportunitiesto break new theoretical ground and investigate previously unexamined aspects of ethnicpolitics.7

In sum, the present study of nationalism and ethnic politics suffers from four interrelatedproblems: the almost singular focus on ethnic minorities (and inadvertent perpetuation of

7In this area, however, there has been productive movement within constructivist approaches that fo-cus on ethnic cleavages or individual activation of ethnic identities. Wimmer’s (2013) study of ethnicboundary making and ethnic boundary-shifting strategies is an important contribution in this regard, partic-ularly for its self-conscious efforts to distinguish between ethnic and nonethnic boundaries.


the civic-ethnic distinction), the neglect of legitimation as a function of nationalism, thedominance of institutionalist accounts of changes in identity, and the ongoing influenceof methodological nationalism. To this list, one might add that the distinction betweennationalist and ethnic politics is conceived less in terms of conceptual relationship and morein terms of their orientation to the state and the status quo. Nationalist politics emergesas a “noisy” form of contentious politics that punctures the daily routines of ordinary life:nations are forged and states claimed through minorities’ contestation of existing, unjustpower structures; nationalist frames for mobilization challenge status quo power relationsrather than justify them; nationalist repertoires inhere in the ways states institutionalizeidentity cleavages and erect opportunities or barriers to their activation; and nations arerealized through mobilization rather than preceding it. By contrast, ethnic politics relate tothe mundane and routine aspects of politics that do not challenge the state. Increasingly,scholars use the term “ethnicizing” in place of “nationalist” to describe action undertakenin the name of one’s claimed ethnicity for the transformation of public goods (or rights, orpower) into ethnic goods.

Everyday Nationalism as a Research Strategy

As an approach working within a Bourdieuian approach to social classification, “everyday”ethnicity and nationalism offers additional opportunities to envision ways to disaggregategroups in terms of quotidian practices (Brubaker et al., 2006; Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008a).The approach does not necessarily compete with the institutionalist or contentious modesof constructivism discussed above so much as complement them by providing guidanceconcerning ethnic structure and stability. The crucial methodological move in this approachinvolves utilizing ethnographic observation for the classification and observation of ethnicpractices. The corresponding practical difficulty, of course, is that such analysis is time andlabor intensive, often requiring prior language training and immersion in the field. Beyondthese practical concerns, the contextual richness of such approaches inevitably fails to satisfycritics who desire a more individualist methodology that either posits ethnic groups andnations as actors (or as outcomes), or that focuses on individual agency to the exclusion of(or prior to) group loyalties and emotional attachments.

One way of overcoming such objections without abandoning ethnographic fieldwork is toreplace individuals or groups with ethnic or nationalist practices as units of analysis. Fox andMiller-Idriss (2008a) identify common varieties of practice (talking, choosing, consuming,performing), yet the identification and elaboration of individual varieties of practice areusually the goal of analysis rather than the starting point for comparison. Instead, one mightutilize the identification of varieties of nationalist practice as the beginning of analysis,examining their modalities across a set of structurally similar cases. Disaggregating varietiesof nationalist practices makes sense where sites for observation already bear historical andinstitutional similarities. One might argue that adopting practice as a unit of analysis risksdecontextualizing nationalism to the point of unintelligibility (Smith, 2008), though thisis mainly a problem if case studies are understood in the clinical sense (as specific countriesor groups) rather than instances of theoretical phenomena (George and Bennett, 2004).

In terms of theory building, the advantage of such an approach is found in the potentialto observe the political relevance of certain varieties of practice in relation to structuralconfigurations. For instance, it is well established that nationalist waves are characterizedby modular nationalist practices and spread among countries with relatively similar insti-tutional structures (or political regimes).8 While the goals of nationalist contention may be

8The classic work in this vein is Beissinger (2002).


couched broadly in terms of justice, democracy, or sovereignty, the frames and repertoiresthat characterize a successful wave of nationalist mobilization nonetheless persist withinnew states or regimes as sources of legitimacy even if they are no longer recognized as“nationalist.” Yet contentious practices thus transformed into legitimating practices remainmodular in form and conceivably remain comparable among new states or regimes. Inthis fashion, examining nationalist practices as units of analysis rather than individualnationalist actors or nations-as-groups enables the study of the persistence of nationalistpractices beyond mobilizational cycles, permitting observation of their roles as legitimating(rather than contentious) practices. Such an approach would also address the critical gapsin constructivist studies of nationalism discussed above: explaining the apparent stabilityof identities and theorizing their relationship to varieties of political regimes in a way thatcan incorporate ethnic majorities while bypassing the civic-ethnic distinction. A furtherextension of such an approach might be to explain the apparent reemergence of nationsafter periods of statelessness in terms of the persistence of nation-defining practices on aquotidian level.

To be clear, this approach does not exclude the roles played by institutions and nationalistpoliticians. It shares with the “contentious” varieties of approaches a sensitivity to thefundamental and ever-present role of power imbalances in configuring identities and theirstrategic articulation. It departs in that the nation does not cease to exist when it isnot activated or mobilized; rather, it persists through a variety of quotidian practices. Afterall, as Wedeen (2010) reminds us, “there is never nothing going on.” As noted above,however, a self-conscious focus on deep contextualization and a perceived resistance togeneralization are likely to limit the appeal and utility of the approach for social scientistsinterested in theory building.

To push past this self-imposed limit on the study of everyday nationalism, the focusof investigation must shift from observing and identifying nationalist practices to linkingthose practices with broad (generalizable) classes of political phenomena. In what follows,we propose a way this might be achieved, and simultaneously address the issues raised inthe first part of this article, by orienting the study of everyday nationalism to a pair oflarge issues: dominant ethnicity and authoritarian legitimacy, and ethnic boundaries andeconomic development.

Studies of authoritarianism have only recently started to look beyond material and co-ercive bases of authoritarian rule to consider ideational sources of stability and legitimacy(Goode, 2012; Dukalskis and Hooker, 2011; Levitsky and Way, 2012; Mellon, 2010;Murzakulova and Schoeberlein, 2009; Razi, 1990; Sil and Chen, 2004). In identifyingsources of legitimacy for authoritarianism, there are finite types or categories of legitimacy(Zelditch, 2001) even if the nature of legitimacy and legitimating claims are irretrievablyspecific to a state’s history. For regimes that came into existence as a result of nationalistmobilization, legitimacy is connected to the ways that mobilizational frames become insti-tutionalized and structure political discourse—especially in the immediate period followingindependence, though this effect may decay or mutate over time and with each changein leadership. For example, where frames of “injustice,” “nation,” and “democracy” areeffective in mobilizing opposition and establishing new regimes, successors are obligated tojustify and orient policy around the legitimating foci of “justice,” “nation,” and “democ-racy.” Over time, however, the repertoire of legitimating claims may diminish to “justice”and “nation” after formally democratic institutions are established and constitutionalized.Still later, or perhaps in the course of leadership change, “justice” may be converted to“security” or “order” as a legitimating claim as new incumbents seek to protect political andeconomic gains while staving off opposition challenges. Crucially, “nation” as a source of,


or claim to, legitimacy cannot be so easily replaced by new incumbents, except perhaps bymanipulation of the concept’s boundaries to render it indistinguishable from “citizenship.”

One can further envision the logic by which categories of legitimacy change in newregimes in terms of the political behaviors and obligations they impose. If new regimesare brought to power by way of mobilization framed in terms of “injustice,” “nation,” and“democracy,” then elites and citizens, alike, are obligated to act to protect minority rightsin ways consistent with defending the majority’s sovereignty. If legitimating claims involve“democracy” and “nation,” then the implied behaviors may include voting or other formsof civic involvement in politics understood as a national duty. By contrast, legitimatingclaims involving “order” or “security” and “nation” may obligate citizens to forego directparticipation in politics or to delegate participatory roles to the regime’s agents (construedas a national duty) or to accept (and act upon) the characterization of potential threats tothe regime as threats to the nation (Connor, 2002). Alternatively, “injustice” and “nation”as legitimating claims may not entail protections for minority rights and, instead, mayentail assimilation or even persecution of national minorities.

While the range of legitimating claims made by authoritarian regimes may be relativelyeasy to identify and track, it is much more difficult to determine the extent to whichlegitimacy-seeking succeeds. The first stage of the methodological strategy for linkingeveryday nationalism with authoritarian legitimacy would entail identifying the varieties ofstate-sponsored or “official” nationalist claims with citizen practices in daily life and acrossvarious policy domains. In general terms, the varieties of behaviors and orientations thatlegitimate and sustain authoritarian rule may include the following: rejection of individualautonomy or displacement of subjectivity in politics; political delegation or inaction;rejection of civil society and the free press; rejection or vilification of political oppositionor political alternatives to the incumbent regime; depoliticization or hollowing out ofnational and subnational governance; toleration of corruption; politicization of justice, orthe diminution of social and political rights.9 Of course, this is not an exhaustive list,but one may reasonably expect the various combinations of behaviors and orientations tovary systematically in accordance with types of authoritarian rule.10 It is not difficult toidentify the behaviors and orientations that regimes consider appropriate. States generatea wealth of public artifacts that stylistically and explicitly situate governments in relationto citizens and vice versa (Barros, 2005). These may be observed by a variety of fieldworktechniques (ethnography, interviews, participant observation) or even methods that do notrequire fieldwork (content, discourse, or narrative analysis) for those already possessingfairly extensive knowledge of a region.

The second stage involves examining the extent to which individual citizens replicate andinvest meaning in regime claims through daily practices. Citizens may engage in behaviorsthat outwardly appear to legitimate authoritarian rule in terms of national identities,but they may also innovate, manipulate, or creatively rationalize the meanings of thosebehaviors. Practices that legitimate authoritarian rule in one social context may becomeironic or subversive in others. Consider the example of public displays of patriotism.Spontaneous displays of patriotism (outside of official holidays) might appear to legitimate

9As one may gather from this list, select behaviors or orientations (such as tolerance for corruption) mayalso be present within democratic or pluralist regimes. This is a strength of the approach insofar as it recognizesthat authoritarian practices are often present within, and actively subvert, established democracies. A crucialdistinction may be that such practices are understood as unjust and they are countenanced in daily life only aslong as they are not publicly exposed.

10On varieties of authoritarian rule, see Linz (2000), Brancati (2014), Geddes (1999), and Linz and Stepan(1996).


authoritarian regimes, yet such practices as wearing clothing with patriotic symbols andslogans may serve a variety of social purposes other than demonstrating support for theregime. For some citizens opposed to the regime, displaying one’s patriotism may serve as aform of social camouflage. Alternatively (or perhaps simultaneously), such displays may bedeeply yet covertly ironic for one’s immediate friends and family. Still others may displayhistorical symbols of patriotism because they are kitschy and fashionable rather than somedeep affective tie to the regime. For those who are politically ambivalent, patriotic displaysmay simply serve marketing purposes in ways that contribute to ritualized observance of theregime’s legitimacy (Wedeen, 1999). Finally, all of these practices may appear to contributeto a generalized sense of patriotic observance and ritual that the state can mobilize at crucialtimes (Billig, 1995). Yet they may also impose a silence and conformity upon the majoritythat could easily be mistaken for regime support by conjuring the image of a united andpatriotic public—an image that evaporates precisely at the moment that it is required in ameaningful, noncoercive way.

There is no substitute for ethnographic observation for divining shifts in these practicesacross social contexts. Interviewing or social media analysis may be tempting ways to divinethe meanings of social practices where researchers lack the time and material resources toconduct ethnography, though methods that focus on a specific context or category of socialinteraction only capture one dimension of practice and—more crucially—are less capa-ble of identifying and interpreting dissimulation. To the extent that interviewing involvesinteraction with an outsider, for instance, respondents may be more likely to adopt, tryout, or simulate positions that would not ordinarily be available in daily social settings.Consequently, interviewing may actually capture meanings associated with practices thatare not relevant to legitimation and, instead, may be prone to observing practices and inter-pretations that seem to undermine regime legitimacy. Of course, experienced interviewerscan manipulate the setting and content of interviews in such a way as to compensate forpotential dissimulation.

Employing a lens of everyday nationalism also allows observers of ethnicity to exploreareas of inquiry traditionally neglected by the mainstream literature on ethnic politics. Afocus on nationalist or ethnic politics as contentious politics overlooks the often subtleand slow-moving influence that market forces and economic development exert on ethnicboundaries. Indeed, economic development can exert a transformative force on ethnicboundaries, and, in turn, economic interests are shaped and influenced by culture andidentity (Hall, 1997; Herrera, 2005). While works that treat ethnic identity instrumentallyassess how economic resources and public goods may become a source of ethnic competition(Bates, 1974; Franck and Rainer, 2012), and institutionally focused studies explain howeconomic initiatives or modes of resource distribution may become ethnicized (Lieberman,2009), these accounts do not consider the ways that economic forces shape ethnic identityon a daily basis. In observing what Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008b) refer to as the “micro-interactional moments,” which maintain ethnic boundaries in quiet times, it is possibleto assess attitudes and behaviors—particularly those related to habits of consumption andperformance—that are taken for granted, coded, or deliberately obscured.

The intersection of economics and ethnicity occurs in a number of ways. Often, economicdevelopment programs partner with large-scale programs of infrastructure modernizationand development.11 Canonical modernist accounts of the rise of nationalism draw attentionto the ways that attempts by central authorities to modernize the state exert a transformative

11The link between authoritarian control and infrastructure programs has been explored in great detail inScott (1998).


effect on ethnic identities. In these accounts, extending the public goods of modernity to allcorners of the state results in cultural standardization (Gellner, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1992).Standardized dialects, legal systems, and economic practices travel along the new highways,rail systems, and power grids that connect all parts of the state to the center (Deutsch,1966; Weber, 1979; Scott, 1998, 2009). These projects allow for the consolidation of stateauthority as well as the solidification of a common national identity.

The state is not alone in influencing ethnic boundaries through economic means. Theprivate sector also influences ethnicity, particularly as the reconfiguration of ethnic bound-aries displaces traditional sources of authority and creates demand for cultural consumption.The market shapes and influences the practices of “ethno-preneurs,” who sell ethnicity as acommodity (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009). In order to meet the demands of the marketand cater to the preferences of consumers, ethno-preneurs may alter, change, or in someinstances invent entirely new ethnic practices (Xie, 2010). For instance, ethno-preneursmay promote ethnic tourism as a crucial means of subsistence for groups threatened byeconomic development at the same time that it reduces ethnic identity to caricature andperpetuates the group’s exclusion from the benefits of modernity. In this way, marketcompetition may exert just as much influence over the contestation and content of ethnicidentity as political or cultural forces, though often in ways unintended by elites who seekto profit from exploiting ethnic boundaries.

Operationalizing the kinds of practices that link economics to ethnicity presents a par-ticularly thorny challenge for researchers, as consumer habits are less outwardly politicalthan other types of behaviors. The first stage of conceptualizing the relationship betweeneconomic and everyday ethnic practices involves linking ethnic content with quotidianeconomic behaviors, including the following: buying exclusively domestically manufac-tured products; buying brands identified or associated with one’s own ethnic group (e.g.kosher or halal products, ethnic food items, etc.); supporting tariffs to protect againstimported goods; refusal to hire foreign laborers; refusing to patronize foreign-owned busi-nesses or restaurants; boycotting companies or products that outsource jobs to other states;boycotting brands or chains that are perceived to be “unpatriotic”; opposing develop-ment projects that endanger local historic or cultural landmarks, or alter traditional socialstructures; supporting public works programs to restore or preserve historic or traditionallandmarks; boycotting brands or products deemed to be culturally “inauthentic” or appro-priating traditional cultural motifs; engaging in cultural or heritage tourism; consumingexclusively nationalist print, televised, or online media; engaging in ethno-preneurship oropening a business that sells commodified or branded ethnic goods.

Each of the practices above represents an area in which matters of consumerism ordevelopment allow for citizens to reproduce or invoke feelings of ethnic belonging. Thesecond stage of our inquiry assesses the meanings citizens invest in these daily practices.Asking respondents simple questions about their interactions with their neighbors, thecontent of their grocery shopping lists, choices in television viewing, or cherished holidaytraditions may yield valuable insights about how the nation is understood, and experienced,by average citizens (Edensor, 2002; Caldwell, 2002).

Discerning the ethnic significance of consumer practices requires great care, as themotivations expressed for making such choices may vary considerably. Take, for instance,the example of a consumer deciding which brand of clothing to purchase. A consumerwho refuses to buy products manufactured abroad, and purchases solely domestic goodsmay be standing on principle as an economic nationalist determined to support the nation.However, such choices may also be made out of convenience or necessity, as the domesticproducts may be cheaper than imported ones. Further still, the choice may simply reflect


the consumer’s personal preference in style. Likewise, this choice may be chalked up tomere indifference, as any brand will do, regardless of its national origin. Finally, any of thesestances may be relevant, becoming activated and observable within different social (ethnic)contexts. Hence, demonstrably “buying American” is meaningful in social context for thoseseeking to bolster their credentials as good Americans (say, for immigrants attempting toassimilate, or for members of a demographic majority running for office).

Ethnographic observations provide the researcher with the contextual cues to discernwhich explanation is most likely. They also allow an outside observer to detect the ethnicsignificance that underlines social actions. Observations of community meetings, localmarketplaces, cultural performances, overheard conversations between patrons at localrestaurants, or the gossip of friends gathered in public spaces provide researchers withinsights about the relationship between market and ethnicity within a community.

In addition, researchers may find that conducting interviews is required in order to getrespondents to unearth the otherwise unspoken motivations that lie beneath their economicpreferences. Making careful use of interview questions is pivotal in decoding the meaningof these practices and understanding their ethnic significance. Researchers must be cautiousto avoid failing into one of the most common traps of studying ethnic politics: that thosewho go looking for ethnic behavior will assuredly find it. In particular, questions must becareful not prime respondents with ethnic answers. Adopting a posture of deliberate naivetymay allow researchers to circumvent such obstacles.12 The respondent, in an effort to teachor inform the interviewer, may reveal previously obscured information that holds ethnicsignificance. Requesting that a shopper identify and describe the items in a supermarketshopping cart may lead the respondent to point out products that are associated witha particular ethnic group, or indicate how certain items are subject to ethnic branding.Asking vendors of ethnic goods to explain the cultural significance of the items they arevending may yield similar results. Merchants may note differences between the item’soriginal ritual or cultural use and its current commodified form, enabling further inquiryfrom the researcher about how market demands have transformed traditional culturalpractices.13 Alternatively, asking respondents to construct timelines of changes within theircommunities, or in their daily routines, may provide insight into the structure of thecontent and contestation of ethnic boundaries, efficiently linking the types of practicesperceived to maintain or activate these boundaries (Berdahl, 1999; Brubaker et al., 2006;Jones and Merriman, 2009). Accounting for the disruption of such daily routines by theforces of the state, the market, or both, may lead respondents to reflect on the adaptationor change of ethnic boundaries in the face of environmental changes.

Equally, the absence or lack of such ethno-national idioms may also prove just asvaluable by revealing the limitations or shortcomings of branding or marketing the nation.Triumphant propaganda may declare that the construction of a subway line, highway,national museum, or stadium fulfills the dreams of a nation,14 but examining whether ornot citizens describe economic development using nationalist tropes or purchase domestic

12A number of volumes devoted to the challenges of fieldwork in authoritarian states discuss the usefulnessof this tactic—notably Solinger (2008), Goode (2010), and Henrion-Douncy (2013).

13Of course, in these circumstances the interviewer’s identity becomes relevant. A position of deliberatenaivety depends upon the respondent’s perception of the interviewer as an outsider who must be educatedabout the meaning and significance of cultural items, and thus, the respondent’s own culture. In this sense,the interviewer does not prime the respondent by asking pointed questions about ethnicity, but ratherallows the respondent to divulge details relevant to ethnicity through his or her attempts to educate theinterviewer. Where the interviewer is perceived as an insider, utilizing such strategies may not be possible.

14At the groundbreaking ceremony for Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts in 2004, thenChinese Minister of Culture Sun Jiazheng famously remarked that the construction of the $512-million theatre“fulfilled the longstanding dream of the Chinese people” (Zhang, 2004).


brands in displays of economic nationalism provides greater insight into whether the gloryof the nation is effectively conveyed through concrete and steel, and whether citizens aremoved by appeals to economic nationalism.

Verification and Generalization

The third stage of a practice-oriented approach involves verification. Focus groups maybe useful as a verification strategy for capturing focused social interaction around commonstimuli, especially when moderated by a local or native interviewer. Interaction betweenparticipants serves a cross-checking purpose; claims that find wide agreement amongparticipants may be treated as having greater credibility, whereas differences of opinionbetween the members of a focus group may be illustrative of competing explanations, orimportant differences in perspective. Field experiments may also be useful for verificationin connecting practices with expected behaviors and orientations, though these may bemore difficult to organize in authoritarian regimes.

If a limitation on “everyday nationalism” approaches is the difficulty of generalizingfrom contextually and historically specific sites, it may also be useful to imagine how onemight gather such observations for inclusion in a qualitative database on the legitimation ofauthoritarian rule, or the influence of economic markets on ethnic identity. The key to sucha move would be to embrace decontextualization as virtue. Certain dimensions of practicewill be isomorphic with regard to regime type or market. One presumes that similar types ofauthoritarian regime will seek similar forms of legitimation. This assumption draws from theburgeoning literature on formal institutions (and especially the role of legislatures) amongauthoritarian regimes (Boix and Svolik, 2013; Brancati, 2014; Gandhi, 2010; Gandhi andLust-Okar, 2009; Magaloni, 2006). There are also likely to be shared regional characteristicsthat produce similar claims to legitimacy, particularly where new governments emerge froma single, sustained regional wave of mobilization. Similarly, successful branding of ethnicityin one community may serve as a template that other communities attempt to follow. Inthis sense, communities may attempt to copy or replicate a particular form of stylization, orincorporate local ethnic commodities into the same market as those communities that haveprofited from the sale of ethnicity. Patterns may emerge in what types of cultural practicesare stylized or produced as logos. Indeed, cataloging such practices in such a fashion mayprove a useful means to identifying transnational or globalizing forces that replicate them.

One may therefore rely upon the ubiquity of state and economic institutions as ameans to standardizing observations of social interaction without substituting institutionalobservations for interactional observations. Whereas the constructivist literature emphasizesthe role of institutions in shaping and defining ethnic and national boundaries, they arealso sites for social interaction that elaborate, challenge, or transform their meanings andsignificance. Secondary and higher education are not just quintessential modernizing forces,but also crucial sites for talking about, choosing, consuming, and performing the nation(Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008a; Fox, 2004). Similarly, marketing firms, advertising, and touragencies provide opportunities to observe ways that the nation is performed, chosen, andconsumed (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009; Caldwell, 2002).

As a verification strategy, organizing field observations in terms of practices andcommon institutionalized sites suggests an opportunity to compare quotidian nationalistpractices (i) in relation to the regime’s or market’s representations to determine their con-gruence with daily practices and (ii) across multiple authoritarian regimes or markets to sortcontext-specific from isomorphic ethnic practices. Once observations are organized in thisfashion, it becomes possible to highlight context-specific practices and to consider their


TABLE 1

Linking Practices, Methods, and Mechanisms

Categories Observedof Practice Methods Mechanisms Implications

Talking and Performing EthnographyContent analysisDiscourse analysis

Top-down inventionBottom-up

(re-)constitution

FramingLegitimationContention

Choosing and Consuming InterviewsFocus groupsParticipant

observation

IncentivizationRoutinization

DistributionSocializationOrganization

salience in part or in concert with generalized nationalist practices. Moreover, organizingdata in such a fashion potentially makes them available for secondary analysis by link-ing practices and methods with causal mechanisms and their theoretical implications (seeTable 1). Hence, one could move toward theory building by working from observationof nationalist practices, to linking practices with causal mechanisms, to considering theirimplications for social or political action. Alternatively, one could utilize these data for ver-ification by working “backward,” starting with posited theoretical explanations to specifyobservational implications, linking them to causal mechanisms, and finally to inspectingnationalist practices for confirming or disconfirming evidence.

Observing and recording nationalist practices in this fashion may be further useful formethodological triangulation.15 Unlike traditional survey research or interviews, observingpractice is less vulnerable to the problem of preference falsification (Kuran, 1995): insteadof attempting to divine individuals’ privately held beliefs at the moment of questioning inorder to infer societal preferences and orientations, the aim of a practice-oriented approachis to observe categories of social interaction as regular, meaning-making action. For instance,individual interviews may be useful for suggesting a range of meanings that individuals arelikely to invest in categories of action in relation to nationalist idioms (for instance, what itmeans “to be a patriot” or “to honor the nation”). Observing nation-oriented practices maythen confirm and elaborate the claims made by respondents in interviews: How much choicedo individuals have in honoring the nation? How do various observable and deliberatelypublic means of honoring the nation feature in daily interactions as a way of sustainingdifferences between majority and minority peoples and justifying differential access topower? Practice-oriented observation may also complement existing event data concerningframing and mobilization by elaborating how identities resonate as mobilizational frames—not just for protest but perhaps more crucially for understanding participation in pro-regimedemonstrations (Adams, 2010; Wedeen, 1999). Likewise, observing the ways that ethnicityis performed or sold may highlight the ways in which the majority fetishize or exoticizeminorities and sharpen the lines that separate them (Gladney, 1994). Thus, practice-oriented observation may help to identify and enumerate the reservoir of cultural traitsand tropes commonly drawn upon and invoked by marketers and governments alike whenconstructing the image of the nation in advertising or propaganda.

15Though it is worth noting that successful triangulation depends on a common understanding of whatconstitutes an observation or case across methods, with multiple methods being brought to bear on the samecomponents of explanation rather than being used in sequence (Ahmed and Sil, 2012).


Conclusion: Bringing the Quotidian Back In

After considerable gnashing of teeth concerning the uncertain utility of constructivismfor producing useful insights and generalizations (Chandra, 2001; Fearon and Wendt,2002; Motyl, 2010), scholars focused their energies on accounting for the dynamics ofidentity change, diversity, and conflict. Advances along these fronts benefited from therange of available data sets that measure various forms of ethnic, linguistic, religious, orcultural diversity, and stimulated newer projects to address their shortcomings. However,ethnic change, conflict, and diversity continue to dominate the constructivist researchagenda. Likewise, nationalism continues to be studied as a contentious form of politics,bound to (if not defining) eventful or transformative moments in history (Beissinger,2002:11–34; Sewell Jr., 1996). In turn, the distinction between contentious and routinepolitics sustains the conceptual distinction between nationalist and ethnic politics. To theextent that the field remains focused more on minorities, conflict, and diversity, than onthe dynamics of dominant ethnicities, it risks perpetuating a distinction between civic andethnic nations—in turn, reflecting and reproducing power imbalances between majorityand minority ethnicities. In treating ethnicity and nationhood as frames or resources formobilization, the field loses sight of their legitimating roles during the “quiet” periods ofdaily life that define the vast expanse of vast time-space outside of (comparatively rare)cycles of contention (Goode, 2012).

When existing studies do address routine politics, they either offload the explanatoryfunctions to institutional dynamics or situate agency within an institutional context. Theprivileging of data that are meaningful in an institutional perspective means that the state’sinstitutional practices often define the relevance of ethnicity in analysis. Meanwhile, ethnicpractices outside of formal institutions (including those that challenge the day-to-dayrelevance of the state’s categorization) potentially go unobserved.

Finally, methodological nationalism continues to influence research designs and theproduction of knowledge about ethnic politics and nationalism. Its effect is most visiblewhere the state’s categorization of identity serves as the font of data and observationsconcerning the salience of ethnic and national identities. It is easy to miss the fluidrelationship between ethnic or nationalist practices and other varieties of social boundaries,eliciting an unintentionally static representation of ethnicity or nationality outside ofcontentious politics. More subtly, all scholars of identity politics confront the thorny issueof how to keep “ethnicity” and “nation” as categories of practice distinct from the termsas categories of analysis, lest researchers of nationalism unwittingly become nationalists byreproducing nationalist ontologies in their research.

In light of these concerns, we argue that the everyday nationalism approach provides auseful complement and corrective: first, by replacing groups and individuals as units ofanalysis with the practices that reproduce, challenge, confirm, and create social identities ona quotidian level; and second, by focusing on social interaction rather than state institutionsas constitutive of ethnic boundaries. Doing so allows us to reconnect constructivism withlarge-scale social and political processes, such as the sources of authoritarian legitimacy or theethnicization of economic development. Further, focusing on quotidian practices enablesus to view these processes from the bottomup. Rather than portraying ethnic or nationalidentities as the outcomes of top-down processes or elite decisions, an everyday nationalistapproach describes how the vast majority of people conceive of, and interact with, ethnicor national identities. Beyond these suggestions, there are a number of additional benefitsyielded by an everyday nationalism approach.


First, assembling observations in terms of social practices may prove useful observing theways that transnational tropes link domestic and international politics. To the extent that acommon, replicated set of market practices commercialize or commodify ethnicity, the ab-sorption of those practices into local idioms potentially reveals a great deal about the banal-ization and instrumentality of ethnicity. Alternatively, the ability to recognize and track suchpractices may prove fertile ground for theorizing about the ways that market interactionsactivate and transform ethnic boundaries, or challenge various jurisdictional and territorialboundaries. If such implications were implicit in deeply contextualized and site-specificworks in anthropology (Barth, 1998), the advantage of the approach advocated here is thedecontextualization of practices for the organization of observations and comparing acrosscases. Decomposing ethnicity and nationhood into ethnic practices further opens up possi-bilities for identifying points of overlap among ethnic practices and nonethnic communityboundaries (religious, educational, generational, and so forth). In this fashion, adoptingethnic practices as one’s unit of analysis may facilitate understanding of the mechanisms bywhich one form of community boundary is activated as an ethnic boundary and vice versa.

Second, constructivists often point out that explaining the stability of identity categoriesis just as important as explaining change, though most tend to focus on the latter. Yet ifcontentious politics approaches make a valuable contribution in explaining how identitieschange through mobilization, the absence of mobilization or the lack of institutional changedoes not explain the stability of identity categories. An everyday nationalism approach laysthe groundwork for understanding the stability of identity categories, as well as theirrelationship to political stability in terms of the interaction of regime with ethnic practices(rather than treating political stability as simply an interlude between periods of contention).

Third, an everyday nationalism approach reminds us of the importance of vernacularunderstandings and voices in elaborating and attaching meaning to ethnic boundaries. Con-structivist approaches—especially those concentrating on state institutions—emphasize therole of elites in crafting and recombining identity repertoires with distributional and mo-bilizational consequences (Marx, 1998; Adeney, 2008). However, elites do not have carteblanche to endlessly invent new identities and they are subject the same socializationprocesses as ordinary citizens in their youth and education. Understanding what ordi-nary citizens do with ethnic and national identities through their daily practices arguablyprovides a more accurate guide to the repertoires available to elites than categories institu-tionalized by the state, as well as a firmer sense of why citizens respond to certain varietiesof ethnic cues rather than others. Close examinations of everyday nationalist practices mayreveal why some legitimating claims succeed while others ring hollow, or why citizens regardsome ethnic brands as “authentic” while viewing others as “fake” or commercialized. Inother words, vernacular understandings of ethnicity are both necessary for, and necessarilyprior to, their manipulation by ethno-preneurs (Smith, 2011; Whitmeyer, 2002).

Finally, everyday nationalism as an approach brings constructivism back to its roots inlocating ideas and meaning making as sources of power emerging through social interac-tion. Insofar as existing approaches focus on causal processes located at the intersectionof institutionalized ethnicity and individual agency, they conform to an individualist on-tology that tends to reify rather than problematize social categories like ethnicity, race, orreligion. This tendency is reinforced through the ongoing use of existing data sets that treatsocial identities and attributes as if they exist independent of the contexts in which theywere produced.16 The approach advocated here suggests short- and long-term solutionsfor the challenge of relating constructivist ontology to methodology. In the short term,

16On the problem relating methods to ontologies, see Bevir (2010), Hall (2003), and Hay (2008).


ethnographic observation may supplant large-n statistical analysis early in the research cy-cle as a means of generating and considering research puzzles. Over the longer term, thedevelopment of comparative practice-based data sets promises to yield similar benefits tothe existing use of large quantitative data sets without the risk of smuggling methodologicalindividualism into constructivist analysis.

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Everyday Nationalism: Constructivism for the Masses*opus.bath.ac.uk/48340/1/Goode_et_al_2015_Social... · The second half of the article suggests ways that an everyday nationalism